The Effect of Occult Development Upon the Self and the Sheaths of Man

Schmidt Number: S-2749

On-line since: 31st August, 2012

LECTURE VIII.

A

S
we approach the processes in the astral body and in the Self of
man as experienced in occult development, it becomes more and
more difficult to describe them. For the experience in these
parts of human nature is far removed from the experience of
everyday life. In the ordinary life of the soul we usually
experience life in the astral body as the flowing and ebbing of
desires, emotions, impulses, passions, etc.; and we also feel
as our inward life that which is expressed collectively in the
ego. But what is thus experienced is really nothing but the
reflection, the mirroring of the self and the astral body in
the etheric body and the physical body; it is no conscious
experience of the astral body and the self. We cannot through
what we experience in the ordinary life of the soul obtain a
true idea of the actual experience in the higher worlds in our
astral body and self; therefore, when we describe these things,
we must have recourse to a kind of representation suited to
these higher worlds, we must have recourse to imaginations: and
these imaginations are really actually experienced. But one
must not imagine that the beholding of the clairvoyant
imaginations is the only thing that we experience; in a sense
it is not even the principal thing; the principal thing is what
we then experience inwardly through it; the processes and
inward tests which the soul goes through when it confronts
these imaginations.

And
this is particularly the case with such an important and
powerful imagination as that which has been described as the
Paradise-Imagination. One who really experiences this
Paradise-Imagination, who can have it before him as a conquest
in higher experience, feels himself standing in the middle of
an inner surging of the soul, he feels himself laid hold of by
an inner soul-wave, and he feels that he himself might err in
the two different directions described in the last lecture; he
feels himself attracted, vividly attracted by all the passions
and emotions which continue to work from the personal life he
had previously led on the physical plane; for the personal
interests which we have gradually acquired on the physical
plane work with ever-increasing strength as numberless magnetic
forces of attraction. But, on the other hand, he feels
something else. The nearer he comes, the more clearly he sees
this Paradise-Imagination, the more power have these forces
which draw him down to personal interests. What they bring
about in him is that they blot out the Paradise-Imagination
more and more, or perhaps it would be better to say that they
prevent it from appearing properly; he is as though benumbed:
the personal interests, emotions, feelings, sensations, etc.,
which we drag about with us, are so many hundreds and hundreds
of magnetic forces which are so many causes of stupefaction.
When the student tries to progress so far in his self-training
that he observes his astral body more and more truthfully (for
the Paradise-Imagination is experienced outside the physical
body and etheric body, that is, in the astral body and Ego),
when he has grasped the true nature and character of the astral
body, he knows that it is the Egotist. And he alone is in the
right position at this point, which he has reached through
self-training, if he does not allow his egotistical interests
to become personal to his nature and to draw him with
numberless forces, but can make the interests of the whole of
humanity and the world more and more his own. At this stage of
occult development a counter-balance against the egotism of the
astral body is felt, something which is the more evident, the
more the egotistic forces bestir themselves in the now
liberated astral body. There is an ever-increasing feeling of
solitude, icy solitude. This icy solitude is also part of what
is experienced in the inward surging of the soul. It is this
icy solitude which cures one of allowing egotism to have the
upper hand, and the student has trained himself correctly if at
this point in his occult development he can feel the impulse to
be everything through himself and for himself, and can at the
same time also feel the frosty solitude approaching him.

It
is just as important to have this feeling as to approach
gradually to the Paradise-Imagination. And when these two
forces, that of the egotism which expands to world-interests
and the frosty solitude, work together, the student then draws
nearer and nearer to the Paradise-Imagination. And when this
latter appears in all its vividness, when it is actually there,
the time has also arrived for experiencing the meeting with the
Guardian of the Threshold in the entirely right way. It is
difficult to give a single description of the Guardian of the
Threshold — I have done so on different occasions in our
theosophical considerations. It is not so much our task to-day
to describe the Guardian of the Threshold as to describe the
inward experiences in the sheaths of man and in the human self.
If the student draws closer to the Paradise-Imagination; that
is to say, if it becomes more and more vivid, and he meets the
Guardian of the Threshold, he then feels the full force of the
magnetic forces just described, and as he confronts the
Guardian of the Threshold he feels — and this is a
dreadful sensation — he feels as though chained or rooted
to the spot. For all the magnetic forces which draw him down to
what is personal now exercise their strongest influence; and
only if he progressed to the point at which the frosty solitude
has become so instructive that he is really able to make the
world's interests his own, does he pass the Guardian of the
Threshold; and then only does he feel himself united with the
Paradise-Imagination, and become one with it. He then feels
himself within it. The experience is like a coming into a right
relationship with the world-interests, so that he can confess:
‘Now only may I allow my own interests to assert themselves,
for they have become the interests of the world.’

But
if he does not pass, if he has not yet acquired sufficient
universal interests, his personal interests then draw him back
and there comes about what in Occultism is described as: not
passing the Guardian of the Threshold. These personal interests
obscure the Paradise-Imagination; he may obtain separate parts
of it, as it were, indistinct impressions, but not perfect
ones, and one is dragged back, as it were, into the personal
life. It may then happen that he has thereby received the power
to have a certain degree of clairvoyant experience; but these
are then really maya-experiences; they may be quite misleading,
for they are entirely permeated and clouded by personal
interests.

Only through such an experience is the student able fully to
comprehend — for it now becomes a serious matter to him,
as it were — that personal interests must pass into
world-interests if he really wishes to see accurately in the
Spiritual world. It is actually the case that before attaining
this stage he cannot thoroughly believe this, for the personal
interests are against it; but now having reached this point he
sees it.

We
have now reached a very hazardous place in the description of
occult conditions; yet the endeavour shall be made to describe
the next steps also, as they appear from the experience of
occultists, and in the way in which they must be given,
reckoning with the fact that our hearers are trying, in a
sense, to make these things a possession of their own souls,
and to work upon them further; for things such as these cannot
be expressed in dry abstract ideas; we must try to portray what
appears to clairvoyant vision. Now, this clairvoyant vision
should by no means be understood as something that can be
rigidly and diagrammatically depicted; but what I shall
describe is again a typical experience, like that of the
Paradise-experience, and we must really have this experience in
order to recognise afterwards what knowledge and occult vision
really are. Until this experience comes we can have no real
idea, I mean no experienced idea, of occult vision; but still,
when such a thing is described, we can understand it, if we
bring sound human understanding to bear upon it. It must now be
described, as far as is possible, from vision itself.

I
will suppose that the student has passed the Guardian of the
Threshold and the union with the Paradise-Imagination is
accomplished; that he feels within it, as if this
Paradise-Imagination had now become his own greater astral
sheath. He still distinctly feels his own astral body about
him, and knows that it is connected with his Self, but at the
same time he knows that this astral body extends its interests
to all that concerns the objects and beings of the
Paradise-Imagination. When the student knows his union with the
Paradise-Imagination is accomplished, he may then have somewhat
the following impression: he will perceive his own astral body
as belonging to him, and when he has felt sufficiently what has
just been described as icy solitude, this feeling becomes a
power within him, and it will preserve him from gazing at
nothing but himself after his accomplishment of his union with
the Paradise-Imagination. He will thereby create for himself,
as it were, the organ by which he may behold other beings. His
occult vision will first fall on another being, a being who
will make a special impression upon him, because it will appear
just like himself. He himself feels that he is in his Self and
astral body; the other being also at first appears to him with
a Self and an astral body. This is because the qualities and
powers which the pupil brings with him to such a moment enables
him to see just such a being, which presents itself as if in a
self and an astral body. The student will now have the following
experience — produced by the frosty solitude which he has
learned to bear.

The
forces of his astral body will be seen endeavouring to flow
outwards. If I were to represent this in diagram, I should have
to draw it in this manner; but, as I have said, it is only very
diagrammatically expressed. I draw the Self something like the
nucleus of a comet, and the astral body like the comet's tail
spreading out above.

But
that is only a diagram; for the student really sees a being, he
sees himself as a being, and this vision is much more complex
than the vision of one's own being as physical man. He also
sees within his own self the other being to which he looks
across. As already said, this is a typical experience. His
vision simply falls upon such a being, but he feels that this
being is not in such a sphere of frosty solitude as he is
himself, and therefore its astral body is seen as though
directed downwards. It is extremely important to experience
this, to feel oneself as if in an astral body which opens
upwards, develops its rays of force upwards, wishes to stream
upwards, and yet to see the other being as a Self whose astral
body develops its forces downwards.

With this typical experience there now comes into the
self-consciousness something like the following: ‘I am of
lower degree, of less value than this other being. What is
valuable in the other being is that it can open its astral body
downwards, it can, as it were, pour its forces
downwards.’ And the student's impression is that of
having left the physical world. The forces which proceed
downwards from the astral body of the other go to the physical
world, and work there as forces of blessing; in short, he has
the impression that he is confronting a being that may send
down to the earth, as a Spiritual rain of blessing, that which
it has acquired in the Spiritual world; whereas he himself
cannot direct his astral body downwards, it insists on going
upwards. He has a feeling that he is of less value, because he
cannot direct his astral body downwards. Further, he has a
feeling that this consciousness arising thus within him must
lead to a Spiritual act. A Spiritual decision matures. This
Spiritual decision is to take his loneliness to this second
being and warm his coldness with his warmth; he unites himself
with this other being. Now, for a moment he has the impression
that his own consciousness is being blotted out, as though he
had brought about a sort of killing of his own being, a sort of
consuming of his own being as though by fire. Then flashes into
the self-consciousness, which had previously felt itself
blotted out, something which he now first learns to know:
Inspiration. He feels himself inspired. It is like a
conversation, a typical conversation, now held with a being
whom he has only learned to know because it allows him to share
in its inspiration. If a student is really capable of
understanding what this being sends in as his inspiring voice,
he might translate what it says in somewhat the following
words: ‘Because thou hast found the way to the other and
hast united thyself with his beneficial rain of sacrifice, thou
may'st return to the earth with him, within him, and I will
make thee his guardian on the earth.’ And the student has
the feeling that something of infinite importance has been
taken into his soul through being able to hear these words of
inspiration. In the Spiritual there is a being that is more
precious than oneself, and that is .allowed to pour its astral
being downwards in blessing. Through the impression of being
able to unite with this being, and being its guardian when he
descends, the student first learns to understand how, as
physical human beings who tread the earth, we are really
related through our physical and etheric coverings to that
which is impregnated as higher powers in the Self and the
astral body. In our physical and etheric coverings we are
guardians of that which is to develop further and further to
higher spheres. Only in this inner experience, when he feels
his external being as the guardian of the inner being, does a
man really have a true understanding of the relation of the
external being to the inner being of man.

Now, when the student has passed the Guardian of the Threshold,
the experience which I have just described does not stand
alone, but is followed by another. I have described the purely
clairvoyant and inspired experience the student may have when,
outside the physical body and etheric body, he arrives at union
with the Paradise-Imagination, and then obtains the inspiration
which first gives an idea of the inter-relationship between the
sheaths. But when he has passed the Guardian of the Threshold a
second impression is added to the first one; the vision opens
past the Guardian of the Threshold down into the physical
world. I draw a line to represent the boundary between the
higher Spiritual worlds and the physical world; above it is the
realm of the Spiritual worlds and below that of the
physical.

He
now sees down into the physical world, as it were, and there
appears another picture, a picture of himself standing below as
man. The student observes his own astral body; but this astral
body which now appears as a reflection is directed downwards,
it does not try to develop the force to stream towards the
Spiritual world; it clings closely, as it were, to the physical
plane, it does not raise itself to the heights. He also sees
the reflection of the other being, whose astral body streams
upwards. He has the feeling that this astral body is streaming
into the Spiritual world. He sees himself and he sees the
other, and he has the feeling: ‘Thou standest there below
once more; in the place of the other being there stands there
below a quite different man; he is a better man than thou; his
astral body strives upward, it rises upward like smoke. Thy
astral body strives towards the earth, it goes like smoke
downward.’ He has a feeling of the Self which dwells
within him as he thus looks down, and the following dreadful
impression comes to him: Within thee a resolve is being formed,
a dreadful resolve, the resolution to kill the other whom thou
feelest to be better than thou. The student knows that this
decision does not come entirely from the Self, for his Self is
there above. It is another being that speaks out of the one
there below; but this being suggests the decision to kill the
other. And he again hears the voice which previously inspired
him, but now it sounds as a dreadful, avenging voice:
‘Where is thy brother?’ And from this self bursts
forth a voice hostile to the former. Previously the inspiration
was as follows: ‘Through having united thyself with the
beneficent powers of the other being, thou desirest to pour
thyself downwards with them, and I will make thee the guardian
of the other being.’ There now bursts forth from this
being that one recognises as oneself the words: ‘I will
not be my brother's keeper.’ First comes the resolve to
kill the other, then the protest against the inspiring voice
which said: ‘Because thou hast wished to unite thy
coldness with that warmth I appoint thee to be the guardian of
that other;’ the protest: ‘I will not be his
guardian.’

When we have had this imaginative experience, we then know all
of which the human soul is capable, and above all we know one
thing: that, if perverted, the noblest things in the Spiritual
world may become the most dreadful things in the physical
world. We know that in the depths of the human soul, through
the perversion of the noblest readiness to sacrifice, may arise
the wish to kill our companion. From this moment we know what
is meant in the Bible by the story of Cain and Abel — but
only from this moment — for the story of Cain and Abel is
none other than the reproduction of an occult experience, which
has just been described. If the writer of the story of Cain and
Abel had been able to describe what took place with man before
the time of the story of Paradise from other reasons than those
displayed in the course of the development of humanity, he
would have described the first experience, the upper one (on
the diagram). Thus he begins with the story of Paradise, and
describes its reflection; for Cain felt in this manner towards
Abel before that period in the development of the earth
indicated by the story of Paradise, he felt towards him as it
has been shown here above. And after the temptation, and after
the loss of the vision which is regained in occult vision
through the Paradise-Imagination, Cain's readiness to sacrifice
had passed into what appears here below; his readiness to
sacrifice had really changed into the wish to kill the other.
The cry we read of in the Bible: ‘Am I to be my brother's
keeper?’ is the reverse reflection of the other
inspiration: ‘I will make thee the guardian of the other
here below on the earth.’ From this you will be able to
see that these typical experiences are certainly important; for
they bring about a certain union between what we may be to-day
and the interests common to all humanity. But at the same time
they show us very clearly by what we experience in them in our
pulsing soul-life, that the principal thing is to feel the
colossal leap the development of humanity has made from what I
described to you as the first, the pre-earthly imagination, as
it were, to that which is presented in the story of Cain and
Abel as an event in humanity after the expulsion from Paradise,
after the expulsion through which the Guardian of the Threshold
has become invisible for man. The knowledge of this leap in the
development of humanity really first shows us what this earthly
man is; for when we really feel through and through what has
just been described, we gradually experience that this earthly
man, as he now is here upon the earth, is the perversion of
what he once was. And we then know with great certainty what we
should have become if nothing else had intervened. If we had
simply developed in this earthly evolution without anything
further, we should have become aware of what this is the
reflection on the earth. We were not to know this to begin
with. It is really only in our present age that man is allowed
to know of what the story of Cain and Abel is the reflection,
that it is the reflection of a lofty sacrifice. All that was
above, everything before Paradise was concealed, for the
Guardian himself hid it from us, when, in other words, man was
driven out of Paradise. This could only come about through the
physical body and etheric body of man being now so permeated
with forces that he does not carry out what appears as the
reflection — for he certainly would carry it out if he
were to feel all that is in the astral body. The physical body
and etheric body so stupefy the human being that his wish to
kill his fellow is not actualised. Consider what is said in
this simple sentence: In that the good, progressive, divine
Spiritual Powers gave man a physical and an etheric body, so
that he cannot look back, something like a sort of stupefaction
was at the same time poured over the wish for the war of each
against all. The desire for this is not roused in the soul,
because the physical body and etheric body of man were prepared
in such a way that this desire is benumbed. A person cannot see
his astral body; therefore this wish, too, remains unknown to
him; he does not carry it out.

If
we wish really to describe the interaction of the astral body
and the self, we must describe things which not only actually
remain hidden to human nature, but which must so remain. But
what has been brought about through the stunning of this and
similar wishes — wishes connected with the annihilation
and destruction of human and other communal life on the
physical plane? They have become debilitated; the human soul
only perceives them in a weakened form; it only feels them to a
slight extent. And the dim feeling of those wishes that would
be something so terrible if man were to allow them free
expression, as they really are — this is really our human
earthly knowledge.

I
am now giving you for the first time a definition of the nature
of human earthly knowledge. It consists of the dim and dulled
impulses of destruction. Shiva in his most terrible form, so
far stupefied that he cannot freely find expression but is, as
it were, made threadbare, compressed into the human world of
ideas — this is the maya of the human being, this is the
knowledge of man. Thus knowledge had to be so weakened —
that is to say, the impulses and inner forces had to be so
weakened — that the original terrible impulse —
ruled by Ahriman, that Ahriman's power (for originally it is
Ahriman who gives rise to this wish) should be so far weakened
that he could not express himself through man, who would have
thereby made himself permanently a servant of Shiva. The sum
total of these forces had to be so weakened that its expression
in man only enables him to transpose himself into the being of
another with his conceptions and ideas. When we try to force an
idea of our own into the being of another, when we try to imbue
another with a conception of our own, this conception impressed
into the nature of the other is the blunted weapon of Cain
which was thrust into Abel. And because this weapon was thus
blunted it was made possible for that which was at a bound
reversed into its opposite, to pass over into evolution. And
thus by a slower evolution, through ever-increasing
strengthening of his knowledge, man reaches at last the
experience of something he was not permitted to express in the
physical world because it there became a destructive impulse;
stage by stage he develops first ordinary knowledge, then
imaginative knowledge, which enters more into the being of
another, then inspirational knowledge, which penetrates still
more into the being of another, till in intuitive knowledge he
enters it entirely and lives on spiritually in the other
being.

Thus we gradually struggle up to the comprehension of what this
self really is. As to its innermost nature, the astral body is
seen to be the great egotist; the self is more than that
— it not only lives for itself, but wishes to pass over
into others as well. And knowledge, such as is acquired on
earth, is this dulled passion to enter into another, not merely
to expand oneself and all that one is, but further to pass
beyond oneself into another. It is egotism intensified and
extended beyond itself.

If
you bear in mind what the origin of knowledge is, you will then
understand that there is always the possibility of misusing it,
for if this is a true knowledge in the Self, the moment it goes
astray it is misused. Only by progressing, and making this
penetration into another more and more spiritual, and the
renunciation by the astral body which has expanded to
world-interests, of this penetration into another's being, only
by leaving his constitution quite untouched and placing his
interests higher than our own, can we make ourselves ready for
higher knowledge. Moreover, we cannot recognise a being of the
hierarchy of the angels, for instance, if we have not reached
the stage when the inner being of the angels interests us more
than does our own. As long as we have more interest in our own
being than in the being of the angels, we cannot recognise
them. Thus we must first educate ourselves up to
world-interests, and then to interests that go even further, so
that another can be more important and of more consequence than
oneself. The moment we try to develop further in occult
experiences, while yet remaining more precious to ourselves
than the other beings we wish to know, that same moment we go
astray. At this point, if you follow out this train of thought,
you really come to a true conception of black magic; for black
magic begins where occult activity is carried into the world
without our first being in the position to expand our own
interests into world-interests, without being able to value
other interests more than our own.

Such things can really only be touched upon, so as to arouse
conceptions concerning them; they are too important for more
than this. I wished to show how we may gradually come to
recognise in its true form, not in its maya, that which dwells
within us as astral body and self; for what a man experiences
inwardly as his astral body is not the true astral body, but
merely the reflection of that in the etheric body. And what a
man calls his self is not the true Ego, but a reflection of the
Ego in his physical body. A man only experiences reflections of
his inner being. If he were to experience the forms of his own
inner astral body and Ego before he was sufficiently mature,
impulses of destruction would be enkindled within him; he would
become an aggressive being; the desire to injure would arise
within him. And such things underlie all black magic. Although
the paths followed by black magic are many, the effect they aim
at is always something like a covenant with Ahriman or Shiva.
We can only learn to recognise the astral body and Ego in their
true form if at the same time we acknowledge the necessity of
developing them and making them worthy of being what they ought
to be. The innermost nature of the astral body is egotism; but
it should become our ideal to be permitted to be an egotist
because the interests of the world have become our own. It must
be our ideal to be allowed to enter into another being because
we do not intend to seek our own interests, but we find the
other being more important than ourselves. Self-education must
go so far that we feel this upper picture in all its
occult-moral significance; that we so gradually transform this
picture which is our self, that we can no longer be warmed by
our own emotions, impulses, desires and passions, but that with
living our life in the astral body we enter the frosty
solitude; we then thereby open ourselves to the warmth, to the
warm interest which streams forth from the other worlds, and
wish to unite ourselves with the beneficent forces proceeding
from this other being. This is at the same time the
starting-point for a gradual raising of our self to the higher
Hierarchies in their true form. We do not attain to the Beings
of the higher Hierarchies if we are not in a position worthily
to confront the Imagination and Inspiration which has been
described, and to bear seeing its opposite picture; that is,
the possibilities in the depths of human nature when it was
cast down from the Spiritual into the physical world. If we
refuse to look upon the twofold picture of Cain and Abel below
— our own self, and the representative of our Higher Self
— the mediator between our self and the higher
Hierarchies — we cannot ascend. But when we are able to
cultivate within our self the feeling indicated here, we then
experience our Self, and this provides the entrance to the
higher orders of the Hierarchies.